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Street Photo of the Week #78

General Note: After having tried the two SPOW approach for the past four themes and considered everyone’s feedback along the way, we’ve decided to resort back to our previous one photograph per SPOW approach to keep the focus solely on one photographer each week. We hope to keep shedding light on new talents from Lebanon and around the world each week and appreciate your support during the trial period the past few weeks. Thank you!

Pet-owners, how often do you experience this?

You walk into your house and your pet can’t hide its enthusiasm to see you (it’s more often dogs than cats in this case as the latter tend to display their affection more subtly). Your pet is ecstatic to see you – jumping-off-the-walls ecstatic! – and yes, it’s because they love you and miss you and all that but it’s also because they know that very soon you’ll be taking them out for a walk. This probably happens each time there’s any indication of a “walk” be it in the form of seeing you pick up their leash or you calling them to the front door to join you.

If you’re living in the city, your pet is also familiar with its streets around you. It’ll mark its territory here and there, sniff up that tree or simply run about excited to be outside the confines of four walls. The way a pet (or any animal in this case) interacts with the streets is clearly different from than that of a human, but combining those two relationships together in a photograph.. that was last week’s challenge for the “People with Pets” theme.

Some of the entries shared not only explored different ways of representing those relationships but also revealed some unexpected animals that we wouldn’t normally consider “pets” – like hogs, sheep and goats – but were in every sense of the word to their owners. Check the full album of entries here to see.

One of the shots that particularly stood out was the following by Nico:

It’s easy to sometimes forget how many human-like qualities animals have, and in this moment, we can relate to the feeling of relaxation the cat must be feeling sprawled-out on the bench. The woman sharing the bench with the kitty is also having a temporary “breather” by reading a book. Neither subject seems to mind the other and on the contrary, complement each other rather well.

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